June Wright’s first novel, Murder in the Telephone Exchange, has the hallmarks of a bestselling whodunit – suspense, red herrings, questionable characters, detailed mise en scène, and the obligatory decorous romance – and indeed outsold Agatha Christie in Australia in 1948, when it was originally published. Wright paints a vivid picture of mid-twentieth century mores, fashions, and entertainments. Her personal experience as a telephonist lends authenticity to descriptions of the Exchange buildings and the frenetic activity of its employees. The archaic language of dockets, plugs, switches, sortagraphs, and interminable delays, the banter of the telephonists, and the enmities and loyalties generated by working in close proximity, prove utterly engaging (forgive the pun).

The charm of Murder in the Telephone Exchange lies in the voice of its reluctant narrator and amateur sleuth, Maggie. She is by turns flippant, sensitive, funny, astute, and bungling. Seen through a haze of cigarette smoke, the boarding houses and genteel tearooms of postwar Melbourne assume a nostalgic hue. Even the moral restrictions and repressions of those times seem benign. This is a world to which I would happily return. Fortunately, the publisher has promised the reissue of a second Maggie Byrnes adventure and June Wright’s other thrillers.